Guides

Monitoring Returned Assets: A Toolkit for Civil Society Organisations

As global efforts to recover and repatriate the proceeds of corruption intensify, a critical question remains: how are these funds being used? To address this, CiFAR has developed Monitoring Returned Assets: A Toolkit for Civil Society Organisations, a comprehensive resource designed to ensure that recovered wealth truly benefits the public and is managed with the highest standards of integrity.

Civil society organisations have been increasingly recognised as essential actors for promoting transparency, accountability, and public participation in the repatriation of stolen assets. For several years already CSOs have been particularly involved in monitoring these returns – both as formal parts of return processes and independently – to ensure that funds are spent as planned and reach communities harmed by corruption. The toolkit builds on this experience and provides the practical foundation needed for CSOs to transition from observers to active monitors of the asset return.

Civil society organisations and asset recovery - a manual for action

With this manual, civil society organisations interested in starting work in the asset recovery field or strengthening current work will find concrete tips and ideas identified from interviews generously provided by CSO representatives and other experts familiar with asset recovery and from previous reference publications.

The manual includes sections on:

• Why asset recovery and CSO engagement in asset recovery matters

• Understanding barriers to asset recovery

• How to get started with asset recovery

• Case studies of CSO engagement

• Ideas for engagement

Citizen Guide to Asset Recovery in Kenya

This user-friendly and informative guide aims to empower citizens, private sector actors, and civil society organizations to have the knowledge and tools to effectively understand and engage with the asset recovery process in Kenya.

The Guide covers:

1. What asset recovery is and how it works in practice

2. The legal framework enabling the recovery of stolen assets

3. Relevant institutions engaged in recovering assets and their role in the process

4. The roles of citizens, the private sector and the media in asset recovery

5. Details of several successful international asset recovery cases

Investigate Manuals

Investigate I

The Investigate series is designed to provide readers with an overview of state-of-the-art practices in investigative journalism, with a focus on illicit financial flows and asset recovery. Our Introduction to Investigative Journalism manual aims to cover points that we have identified as being important for investigating grand corruption, financial crime and asset recovery, the main areas of investigative reporting useful for, namely: theoretical and research frameworks, investigative resources for deep web research, databases and access to information, as well as digital safety. Three supporting case-studies have been added as an illustration of the use of these tools and techniques, based on three investigative cross-border stories published by some of our trainees. This last part is designed to provide a “behind-the-scenes” overview of the investigative work of these three journalists that, we hope, will be useful for current and new early career investigative journalists.

Investigate II

This manual is the second instalment of Investigate: The Manual, which was first published by the Civil Forum for Asset Recovery (CiFAR) in 2021. This second volume of Investigate aims to provide additional knowledge and tools that are particularly relevant for investigating grand corruption, financial crime and asset recovery. It includes an overview of integrity and legal protections for journalists, outlines the fundamentals of fact-checking investigations, and addresses physical safety for investigative journalists. As gender imbalance continues to be a major challenge in journalism, there is a chapter dedicated to current challenges faced by women journalists working in newsrooms, including tools to mitigate gender disparities in the field.